Tomarrow, I am taking my car in for the second time in a month regarding a malfunction in the top opening. After the windows go down and the trunk lid fully opens, the top will not fully release from the windshield.

The first repair shop order indicated "cable came off- reattached cable". Anybody have similar experience and any idea which cable they might be talking about? They only indicated a half hour shop time.

 

From what I have read on the various boards throughout the years, that's pretty unusual. If it only took a half hour in the shop, my guess is that some cable came undone in the trunk area that is pretty easy to get to. I would ask the mechanic to show you what cable he is talking about and where he re-attached it.

Is it a cable on a pulley or an electrical cable? If it has happened twice in your car and seldom if ever on others, I would want to know why it is coming off and needs re-attachment, and I would like to know if it's something I could re-attach myself if necessary (especially if the cable came un-attached when the top is down, which could be VERY inconvenient).

Good luck with this.

Take some comfort in the JD Powers survey released this week. Lexus was #1 in the world, and number 2 was not really that close.

 

Just got the car back and took 10 minutes this time. Apparently a mechanical cable runs from the trunk along both left and right roof channels to latches on the windshield. The one cable on the passenger side keeps popping off of a bracket.

The fix was to utilize a cable tie to hold the cable in the bracket. They did both sides.
I guess this beats contact cement or silly putty!

 

That's nice to know.

Although I never really looked carefully, I had always just assumed that the moving part of that latch was in the windshield, but it makes sense to control it from the trunk and have the moving parts in the roof.

I think I recall that the very famous Ford "Skyliner" from the 50's locked the top down by having a bolt in the roof and a threaded socket in the top of the windshield which rotated. That car eventually failed because it had too many motors, no computer to controll everything (of course) and it the roof mechanism just failed too much.

We seem to have solved those problems. I have a friend who has had an MB SLK from when it was first introduced, at least 2 years prior to the SC430, and he puts the top up and down almost every day and has never had any problem.

Nor have I in over two years -- I have had mine since the first month they were available.